Ah that's kinda the idea. You read in the current file and parse it using a parser module. *You* make your changes to this parsed data set. *You* print out the new file from your munged data set.

One significant problem with retaining comments is that they are only useful if the are relevant. Comments that relate to parts of the file which have been changed are worse than useless.

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

<sarcasm>No kidding?</sarcasm> That's *kinda* what I'm looking for help with. Parsing the named.conf file was easy enough and, as you mentioned, I could have used Bind::Conf as a starting point for that.

What I'm looking for is tip on writing a new, updated, config file back out.

Maybe some more information would help. I'm currently writing a fresh new config (with no comments or formatting etc preserved from the original) to a temp file. Then I copy the old file to a .bak extension and copy the temp file over the /etc/named.conf file.

So far so good. But I posted this query in the hopes that with all the massive knowledge and experience that the combined readers of PerlMonks have, that someone will have either tips on ways to improve this procedure or warning about things I might be doing badly.

Maybe I should have been more clear in my initial post. Still, there have been some pretty good suggestions posted here and I definately feel more confident of what direction I should go in.